Buddha gets laid

>> Indie comedy goes mainstream in The Tao of Steve

by MATTHEW HAYS

So here I am, once again, finding myself at a loss as to why on earth anyone liked this generally favourably reviewed film, The Tao of Steve.

It's an ostensibly innocent indie flick about an overweight fella, Steve, who manages to attract many chicks despite being kinda tubby and a slacker. He may not have a high-powered job or bulging abs, but heck, he works part-time in a daycare and he's awfully sweet with the kids (he makes those cuties laugh!) so he must be a decent fellow (one who understands that the rest of us are really deluded for being on that dreadful nine-to-five treadmill).

Steve finds himself falling for a blonde sexpot who likes him back, and--egads!--this throws all of his zen netting-the-babes theories into question. Could he have found true love? Is this the end of his slutty ways? Should he settle down with just one woman?

I couldn't help but read this film in an ultra-cynical manner. Do we really need another movie about an essentially unattractive guy winning the sex kitten? I thought this type of romance had reached its high point with As Good As It Gets, when obsessive-compulsive Jack Nicholson was rescued by Helen Hunt, a woman approximately one third his age. Apparently not. I was also put off by an ueber-Hallmark scene, in which Steve and blondie exchange "ice-cream kisses," an act involving the sharing of different ice-cream flavours (detracting from the scene's wholesomeness is its being punctuated by a gratuitous Baskin Robbins product placement). And I'm also somewhat fatigued by self-consciously pomo pop culture references, this time to Hawaii Five-O and The Six Million Dollar Man. Normally, I'm not opposed to any ode to bionics, but these wore me out--damn ye, Quentin Tarantino!

Instead of seeing a sweet and naive little film about unconventional beauty winning out, I saw an essentially mainstream film about love conquering all (how revolutionary!) masquerading as an indie film. Steve's Tao truisms rang mighty false to me, but hey, some people really seemed to like this one. Rather, The Tao of Steve struck me as one gigantic poser of a movie.

The Tao of Steve opens Friday, Oct. 27